Write Club

So enjoying listening to the Write Club podcasts.

This group of writers discuss everything from why we write to how we find excuses not to write (the noble art of procrastination!), and as well as reading short extracts from their own writing, they discuss research, approaches to writing, writing exercises, and the importance of reading, ending the podcasts with discussions of the books on their bedside tables.

It's easy-going and invariably humerous, and yet thought-provoking and gives the creative urge a kick up the proverbial. As well as giving writers a chance to engage with what and how other writers are writing and reading, you can join in their discussion on their Facebook page as well as on their podcast page. It's like being in a friendly and supportive writer's group without having to take the trouble to go out and find one! 

Something exciting happening in the ether...

Well there's something exciting brewing over the next few weeks, and it involves writing and books and podcasts and sunshine and quite alot of rather gorgeous scenery...

Jakob's Colours by Lindsay Hawdon

Amazon link

I'm finding some absolutely beautiful and also absolutely heartbreaking books in the library at the moment - this one, Jakob's Colours, was recommended by a friend, and is right up there with the best of them.

I am conscious that I've been using the word "beautiful" quite a lot in recent reviews, but just switching the word does not alter the fact that sometimes it is the best description. Jakob's Colours is beautifully written, and I adore the characters who inhabit its pages and the tiny cupboards within its walls. The Roma Holocaust - the Porajmos - is little-visited in literature, and rarely does any book telling the untellable do it with such devastating beauty.

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Amazon link

And the Mountains Echoed is a beautifully written, intense, and accomplished novel, as you'd expect from the author of The Kite Runner and the even more splendid A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I did feel that I'd have liked to have spent more time with some of the characters at the heart of the novel, followed them in more detail over all the years they travelled in search of what was lost, but that's a testament to Hosseini's engagingly human characters and powerful storytelling in what is both a heartbreaking and an uplifting journey.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Amazon link

The Miniaturist is a wonderfully inventive and sensuous novel with fantastic characters - both human sized and miniature! - and a deeply engrossing plot. The sights and sounds and smells and claustrophobic politics of 17th century Amsterdam infuse this intelligent novel, and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing - even if you might have seen some of them coming! 

The key to the sheer delight of this novel is the core thread of the relationship between the central character, Nella, and the mysterious miniaturist, which is nicely poised between the beneficent and the sinister and keeps you reading avidly to the end of this excellent book.